The Aeroflot flight SU 1492 was forced to make an emergency landing at Moscow leaving 41 passengers dead and 37 survivors.

A lighting strike can cause technical malfunction causing a plane to divert or make emergency landing for precautionary reasons, investigators claim that such incident happens once in a blue moon.

Investigators are yet to make any official comment on the cause of the crash as surviving passengers said the plane was struck by lightning while Russia’s national carrier said the plane returned to the airport for ”technical reasons.”

The plane was airborne for approximately 28 minutes before it made an emergency landing wherein the engines caught fire in the process.

41 passengers in which 2 were children, four members of the crew and a flight attendant are reportedly dead wherein the jet had 73 passengers and five crew members , 5 people are currently in hospital.

The pilot Denis Yevdokimov told the Russian media that the lightning interrupted  communications with the air traffic controllers which made him switch to emergency manual mode.

Murmansk’s Acting Governor, Andrey Chibis has reportedly said that the families of those affected by this plane crash will each receive one million rubles ( £11,630), while the victims being treated in hospital will be given 500,000 rubles (£5,815).

Surviving passengers were left traumatised by this incident wherein most of them thought of never having to see their families again.

“Only thanks to the flight attendants, I survived,” One of the surviving passengers, Dmitry Khlebushkin, said.